Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  Lothar was confused. “Why do you damned Yids know so many state secrets?” He was thinking also, why the fuck was the young asshole telling him instead of just beating him into submission?

  The younger man gave a weary shake of his head. “Awfully hard to recruit good people without some sort of story. You think Germany beating the British matters to most of us? Germany, Italy, Britain … it is all the same with us. Why should we give a shit beyond staying alive? Just avoiding being executed doesn’t cut it for getting first rate technical labor. So we got a story where we matter, can have decent lives. Got it in bits and pieces through our minders and Berlin. I doubt we know 5% of it, but why would the high strategy matter to little people like us?” Paul gave Lothar a stare, shook his head sadly. “And that’s why I’m explaining to you. My brother would just as soon twist your neck off, write it up as a shop-floor accident. No one will rat us out. My brother Peter was always a hothead. Ran rough crews with his fists and boots. I was the one doing the machining back in the shop for his roughnecks to install. I am short of first-rate metal workers. Who am I going to recruit out here? Another illiterate raghead like Abdul Collins?” Lothar looked at Paul blankly. “The Arab boy, works for the head cook Mary.” Lothar nodded slowly. He vaguely remembered the sand nigger. “You do good work when you pay attention to anything besides your stupid grievances. Made it worth five minutes to try. Five but not thirty.”

  Lothar hated everything about this. But he’d still rather be an SA officer than a village blacksmith. Röhm had promised a revolution to guys like him. A revolution that had never happened because Röhm and his boys turned out to be pansy degenerates. “I’ve lost my command. What’s my pay status?”

  “Whatever it says it is for your rank. When we ever get a paymaster section, ask them. I’ll tell the pay clerk what you’d get as a master craftsman by our scale. He’ll pay you the higher. Meantime, doubt you need your pay anytime soon. Nowhere to spend it before we take the big cities. Gunter’s asked Berlin for a paymaster.” Paul had never learned military discipline. Oberst Strauss was a family friend, not a commanding officer. “The one we were expecting, Greta’s father, got himself killed. His fool wife, Crazy Ruth, back-talked some SS officer. Bang, bang, too bad, so sad. Ruth’s big mouth was a running family joke. We always said it would kill her. She’s no loss. Pity she took her husband and kids with her, but that’s war. He was a good bookkeeper. We’ve got dozens more at our base camp in Italy, but Berlin hasn’t decided if they want to send their own guys or not. You need pocket money before it all gets worked out?”

  Lothar saw red. “What interest?” Jews were always slick with money.

  “No interest. We write it up as advance against pay and sort out the advances and the back sums you are owed. I’m sure there’s someone doing the usual 6 marks next Monday for 5 marks today game. Every work crew I ever knew of had a few. But it is not a scam we run on our own. The words you need to learn are ‘us’ and ‘them’. The oil fields are going to be a boom town from all that gas.”

  Lothar blinked. “Gas? Thought you said oil.”

  Paul had forgotten that ordinary people didn’t know much about oil fields. “It all comes out together. Oil, gas, some more solid stuff you use to pave roads. It’s complicated. Refinery work isn’t my thing yet. More shit to learn, machines to fix. But there’s no cheap, easy way to ship the gas back to Europe. So it usually mostly gets flared off. Joey and I have been talking. That’s a shame. We get the gas into canisters, or better yet eventually its own pipeline. The gas burns. Fire means heat. Means steam and electricity. Be a boom of plants needing cheap power. Joey recruited a bunch of guys with that lure. Work with us through the conquest and start your own shop when we get demobilized. Get a bunch of locals for sweat labor. When the shooting ends, I’ll catch a ship home to Romania. Got a whole bunch of our old guys I’ll try recruiting.”

  “More Yids?”

  “A few. Mostly Romanian Slavs, but there’s Magyars, Serbs, Roma. Bit of this and that. Oilfield work is a gypsy kind of trade. A lot of guys drift from one field to the next. Labor need falls off once a field stops expanding. No more bonuses and overtime. Strangers get bounced so the bosses can bring in nephews and cousins. Way of the world. Worked with a black man from America for a while. He’d worked oil in the States, the islands to the south, Mexico, Venezuela, Borneo and Persia before ending up in Romania. Story was he had to leave Persia fast.”

  “Why?”

  “Got caught in the wrong bed when her husband came home. Don’t tell me that never happened in Germany.”

  Lothar thought for a moment. He still hated this all, but unless that new General took him he was out of options … for now. Meantime, working was better than getting beaten up by young men half his age. Lothar put out his hand and Paul took it. Paul knew he was buying a truce at best, but for now it was enough.

  Chapter 7

  1300 Hours CET

  16 September 1940

  Heereswaffenamt (Weapons Office), Jebensstraße corner Hertz Avenue, Berlin

  The six-story building that housed the Army’s weapon office had been a hive of constant activity almost from the moment that Hitler took over Germany. Waffenamt had coordinated the procurement of tens of billions of Reichsmarks of weapons, equipment, and munitions for the Wehrmacht. This process hadn’t always gone smoothly. Once war began, the Army had cried out for ever more munitions and weapons. The crisis over munitions had driven the previous head of the Waffenamt, General der Artillerie Karl Becker, to suicide just before the invasion of Denmark back in April.

  Poor Becker, thought General der Artillerie Emil Leeb, current head of the Waffenamt. If he could only see where Germany was today. Totally triumphant on the continent, and now driving across Africa. Still, there had been ample cause for the stress that finally caused Becker to end his life. When the Reich went to war in 1939 the army was just! Not! ready! The outside world only saw Germany going from triumph to triumph; people had no idea how hollow a shell the army really was, or what a disaster the procurement and production process was. Design and industrial expansion programs had been started not intending to be finished until 1942 or 43! Germany had been armed in breadth, not depth. There were never enough raw materials, enough money, enough manufacturing facilities, enough skilled labor, enough anything except competing bureaucratic empire-builders. The National Socialist state appeared from the outside as an invincible monolith working towards the Führer’s will. The reality had been a set of squabbling satraps lurching from crisis to crisis. On top of that, the directives from the national leader had been like a weathervane, blowing in the breeze of whoever had his ear last.

  Those problems had ended when Heydrich assumed power. The problem was now quite the reverse. All programs suddenly had to justify themselves. Waste, lies, and minor feathering of one’s nest produced visits from the Gestapo. Army officers were spared the worst. Their civilian contractors frequently got to experience the joys of scientific interrogation, often followed by an appointment with the hangman or the headsman. Hitler had lived in a world of imagination, of the projection of his will on mundane matter. Heydrich and his henchmen such as Todt and Speer, were pure technocrats. Germany must henceforth cut its coat to fit its cloth. Resources were all finite and carefully guarded. Efficiency and combat power were now the rules of the weapons procurement process.

  One of those programs was the source of today’s meeting. The service rifle of the Army was the Mauser 98K, accurate, long ranged, rugged ... and first produced in 1898! A specification had been issued in 1938, 40 years after the Mauser first entered service, for a new service rifle. The new service rifle was to be capable of single-shot or fully automatic fire. Of course, the war started before that project, like so many others, could finish.

  After Malta there had been a change in membership of the Reich Council on Armaments and Munitions. Von Richthofen was now Deputy Reich Minister of Aviation and Deputy Chief of the Luftwaffe. No one was fooled by this
polite fiction of titles; von Richthofen was in total control of the Luftwaffe. The Malta triumph had deeply embarrassed Führer Göring with the poor showing of his service. The new head of the Luftwaffe had taken his mandate from Göring to clean up the service and run with it. Besides replacing himself on the council and as Generalluftzeugmeister (Luftwaffe Director-General of Equipment) with General Der Flieger Wilhelm Wimmer, there had been a general removal of deadwood and old Göring flunkies. Old comrades of Göring had been moved out of technical slots. A prime example was Erhard Milch, moved from Inspector General to a combat command. The lesser deadweights had been seconded to the Chancellery staff. The new Führer and Chancellor preferred not to do actual government business, so these clowns could do little harm there beyond consuming champagne and caviar at galas.

  For Wimmer, his new appointment was life coming full circle; before Udet held the role of Generalluftzeugmeister it had been his. Along with Wimmer, General Thomas of the Army, Admiral Fuchs of the Navy, and Speer were here to get an update on the Maschinenkarabiner (Mkb) program launched in 1938 to replace the 98k. The invasion of Malta, it seemed, had sparked some renewed focus on the state of German small arms. Heydrich had talked to Todt, and the Minister for Armaments and Ammunition had set his four minions to look into matters. Malta had yet again shown the need for selective fire was far more important than accuracy at long ranges. Conscript armies did not produce masses of marksmen. The need was for heavy firepower at close-to-medium ranges.

  “Gentlemen, Haenel is scheduled to do a live-fire demonstration later this year; Walther, it is not clear if their prototype will be able to make that date.” As General Leeb explained, junior officers passed out information packets to the four that made up the Reich Council on armaments and munitions. Turning a page, “Mauser and Walther are working a parallel project for a semi-automatic rifle. It is not expected for either to have a prototype ready for first demonstration until next year.”

  At mention of having two weapons programs, the four men across from Leeb frowned almost in concert. A clear and (recently) ruthlessly-enforced mandate was to rationalize and consolidate research and production programs. The new mandate was currently playing hell with production, as lines were forced to shut down to convert over, but there would be major dividends later.

  Noting the response, Leeb quickly explained, “There are problems with the Mkb program. An alternate possible source was thought prudent; the rifle grenade and other requirements are proving difficult to meet, and from the reports received from Poland and the West … ”

  There was a shuffling of papers by all in the meeting room. While Leeb continued to talk, Speer glanced through the reports. Incredible, some of these actually date back to the early 1920’s, right after the Great War! In brief, the reports pointed out the same thing, anything above 400 meters for a service rifle was superfluous in terms of range for the vast majority of battles. What was needed was higher rates of fire, larger magazines, and faster-changing magazines.

  The paratroopers had cried out to their parent organization, the Luftwaffe, to do something about the issue of small arms, and General Wimmer had listened, “General Leeb, the day of the bolt-action rifle is done. The Americans four years ago started to issue a new semi-automatic rifle … the … ”

  “The M-1 Garand, General Wimmer.” Leeb helpfully supplied; and General Thomas added his own information, “The Italians have started production of the Armaguerra Model 1939, a 6-round semi-automatic rifle.”

  Then Speer: “The Soviets are working on a semi-automatic rifle, produced by an engineer named Tokarev; they used it against the Finns, but rumors suggest they are still trying to refine the design.” By now everyone was used to him functioning as the funnel for SS requests and foreign intelligence findings.

  “The Reich cannot be left behind, General Leeb.” Thomas’ statement left no room for debate. More and more, the Army was looking east with concern at the Soviet Union. The invasion of Japan’s puppet state in Manchuria would provide only a temporary distraction. Stalin’s Hitler Pact, and now the vast eastern campaign, had clearly shown that all dealings with Moscow were transactional and transitory. When Stalin saw advantage, he would strike West.

  Previous to the meeting, Heydrich through Schellenberg had impressed on Speer and Todt the need for continued integration of Europe’s economy and armaments industry. “If the new rifle programs are having trouble, perhaps additional sets of eyes are required. I suggest we add a replacement service rifle to the Europa Cartel system. The French and Italians have skilled small arms designers and manufacturers. So do the Belgians and Swiss.”

  It was difficult for the other members of the group to hold their tempers at this point. France had been a bitter enemy for decades, if not centuries, and Italy was viewed with contempt, but the directive from Prinz-Albrecht-Straße was logical when viewed dispassionately. The three uniformed officers silently nodded their agreement to one another. General Leeb, when the meeting was over, reissued the replacement service rifle specification – but it would also go to firms across Europe, not just to German ones.

  The Luftwaffe general added that, as regards his service, the rifle-grenade capacity was expendable. Speer had been about to make the same statement as regards the Waffen SS, NL, and SA. He did get to add that a lighter cartridge was also acceptable for the services he directly represented. The important factors were ease of cleaning, simplicity of use, and firepower in the assault. For defense, the primary weapon would remain the machine-gun. As ever-greater numbers would be needed, the meeting turned to the projected simpler replacement, the MG-39.

  1400 hours Central Daylight Time; 2000 hours CET

  16 September 1940

  Ft. Riley Kansas

  Newly-promoted Brigadier General George Patton could have regarded being moved from commanding an Armored Brigade, to be the commander of a yet-to-be-formed Armored Cavalry Regiment, as a demotion. He never for a second thought of it that way. This was a combat command, the only one the US Army currently had.

  In theory, this was a training and demonstration force for the new Christian Chinese Army. That was a polite fiction. He would teach their cadres via service alongside his troopers. What was better, for political reasons, his regiment would consist only of volunteers. No draftees whining to their mothers, Congressmen, and the press about hard-nosed discipline, severe training, or casualties.

  Higher command had created the idea of armored cavalry as a light armored force, geared to rapid mobility in a combined-arms setting. Patton smiled to himself. Lot of swell-sounding words for the press release. Reality was something else. The US military had almost no armored fighting vehicles, and what they had was pathetic. M-1 and M-2 cavalry combat cars, and two variants of the M-2 light tank. The first real tank, the M-3 Stuart, was months away if everything went well, and nothing ever went that well on new weapons systems. General Marshall promised him a hundred of these models combined. Patton was more concerned with spare parts and trained mechanics. He doubted the order for a hundred would produce eighty vehicles, and would bet half of those would be nonfunctional repair-bay queens. That was how he would have responded to such an order if he were still commanding an armored brigade.

  His former division commander, General Chaffee, wouldn’t let him steal his former command’s vehicles wholesale. Chaffee had allowed Patton to interview for volunteers, and had gifted him with eight totally obsolete M-1 armored cars. For the rest, he would use WW1 four-wheel-drive light trucks, touring cars, and whatever else the supply people could scrape up. DC wanted something that could be deployed fast, not a perfect unit for 1942.

  Patton had a thought on how to get good men. He planned to field at least one battalion of colored troops. The Buffalo Soldier regiments always had career privates who could easily be made corporals, and corporals who were worthy of being sergeants. They were also less likely to have racial problems with English-speaking Chinese and Eurasians serving in their ranks. Plus Mrs. President wa
s a big defender of the darkies. Having patrons at the top helped.

  The unit had been promised test models of every tank, half-track, and armored car the Army put into prototype production. That was for later. For now he would fight battles along the banks of the Yangtse, as the legendary Ever Victorious Army had done almost a century ago under American commander Frederick Townsend Ward. And later, after Ward’s death, under his successor Chinese Gordon. He’d have his staff people make up a comic book on this all, for the troops to read on the transports over.

  His old friend Ike Eisenhower had served a few years in the Philippines. Knowing Ike, he’d made good connections. He’d asked Marshall if he could have Ike as a battalion commander. Marshall said Eisenhower would have to volunteer. Battalion was a step down for a lieutenant colonel, although not a big one. Patton had sent him a telegram that had led to a phone call. Ike would leave in a few days for Manila by air. The twin gifts offered were a promise that when the regiment was upgraded to a two-regiment brigade, Ike would get a regiment with a colonelcy and combat. Ike had been stuck in a training command in WW1, and had never lived down not being a combat officer. It had done much to stall his career.